Ric rac dress

I love/hate this dress, and I learned a few things in the process of making it.
This dress is a mash-up pattern! This is the first time I’ve tried that.
The bodice is McCall's 5927, skirt is Vogue 8723.

MWF seeks sister wife to do laundry, cook dinner, and keep husband/kids happy ;P
I am very happy with my pockets. First dress I've made for mysef that has them.
A belt helps a little, I guess. I really don't know why I thought rick rack all over my chest would be a good look for me. I do like the skirt part. Wish I had done the bodice in just a solid color.

Things I learned:
Understitching is pretty awesome.
So is a rolled hem foot (once you figure out how to use it).
Sometimes doing it by hand is the best way. I made the bodice and lining and then stewed on this thing for weeks because part of the lining had to be hand sewn to the bodice. I even attempted it by machine several times. I let the stupid hand sewing be an excuse to stall out and when I finally got around to just doing it, it took me 20 minutes.

I would really like to learn more about fit. This definitely fits better than my last dress. The pattern is one that comes in different cup sizes, and I think that helped a lot, but I've still got a lot of room on my back, between my shoulder blades, and I'm not sure what fit issue that indicates (forward shoulders? Narrow shoulders? High round back?) or if maybe I just still need a fuller bust adjustment.

I wish I could take credit for doing this on purpose. It’s something I really want to learn how to do. By some miracle, all my seams in the skirt lined up in the fabric pattern. Pretty cool!
The top is just a regular hem folded in on itself with the help of a seam gauge. The bottom I did with the rolled hem foot. I really like this foot. I didn’t get it perfect all the way around, but I know I will use it again and get better with practice. Even though tonight was my first time using it, and it took an hour of practicing on scraps to figure it out (with you tube help), I’m pretty impressed with how precise it looks compared to the folded hem.